Friday, 26 September 2014

A Must Have for Nursing Mothers

I am very pleased to welcome Doctor Dillingham back to the salon today, fresh from a jaunt home to Edinburgh. Always a most reserved man, he nevertheless knows a thing or two about a thing or two and has shared a glimpse at an intriguing treasure from Georgian medical history with me today.

The rather perfectly formed item pictured above is not, as a salon visitor wrongly guessed, a tea strainer. It is, in fact, a silver nipple shield. This would have been used to ensure the comfort of a nursing woman during months or years of breastfeeding, preventing any unpleasant chafing or soreness and hopefully ensuring that this particular element of motherhood went as smoothly as could be!This is a beautiful example of a rather wonderful piece of domestic history and one can only imagine that it would have been used in a very fine household. No doubt the lady to whom it belonged was grateful for the respite her silver nipple shield brought, let alone the rather fine craftsmanship that went into creating it!

11 comments:

It looks rather painful to me. I thought when I first saw it that maybe it was to spare the new mother embarrassment when breast feeding in public. Goodness knows, there's still a lot of fuss made about that even today, one female MP being told off for feeding her baby in Parliament meetings!